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GCN Home > 06/23/03 issue

OMB revises architecture models

By Jason Miller, GCN Staff

The Bush administration has penned a plan to fundamentally change the way agencies use systems to meet their missions, federal IT and industry executives say.

The recently released second version of the Federal Enterprise Architecture’s Business Reference Model “reshapes the way agencies think about the business they do,” said Mark Day, deputy CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Day predicted that the architecture model will end “turf wars within and between agencies because we are slowly realizing if we don’t get our act together, someone else will take our work, such as managing systems.”

The first version of the model was far simpler. In the latest version, the FEA Program Management Office identified four business areas, 39 lines of business and 153 functions within those lines of business to cover the work of the government’s agencies.

Other agency IT managers and private industry observers said the latest version will significantly improve agencies’ understanding of their relationships to one another—unlike any other document produced by the government in the last 20 years.

“The concept of reference models like this is very sound,” said John Weiler, executive director and chief technology officer for the nonprofit Interoperability Clearinghouse of Alexandria, Va. “It is a different tack than what the government has done historically.”

The approach reflects an industrylike perspective, looking at outcomes and performance rather than processes, he said.

The Office of Management and Budget this month released the revised Business Reference Model along with the Service Component Reference and Technical Reference models.

The Bush administration expects agencies to use the models to find opportunities for collaboration, said Norman Lorentz, OMB’s chief technology officer.

“The end result of this effort is a more effective application of IT resources to meet the needs of the citizen,” Lorentz said.

Eliminate redundancy

OMB wants agencies to amass data for the models when preparing their fiscal 2005 budget requests, specifically looking for ways to eliminate redundant systems and applications across agencies, he said. OMB budget analysts will then in turn be looking for missed collaborative opportunities, Lorentz said.